


At the End of the Day

by Ponderosa



Category: The Unit
Genre: Black Male Character, Canon Character of Color, Coda, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Team Dynamics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-09
Updated: 2014-02-09
Packaged: 2018-01-11 17:06:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1175621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ponderosa/pseuds/Ponderosa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charles had started by picking up beer bottles and ended up staying to help Jonas with the dishes. Everyone else has staggered on home.</p><p>Coda for s3e6 "MPs".</p>
            </blockquote>





	At the End of the Day

**Author's Note:**

> Porn Battle prompt - Jonas Blane/Charles Grey, orders, understanding
> 
> Takes place immediately after s3e6 MPs. And it is not actually very porny? Oops.

Charles had started by picking up beer bottles and ended up staying to help Jonas with the dishes. Everyone else has staggered on home.

“Still eating at you?” Jonas asks, as he hands over the last bowl to be dried. “What that young woman did with your poem.”

“Shouldn’t it?”

Jonas folds his arms over his chest. “A man can’t help the way the world works.”

“Well the way the world works sucks.”

“It surely does at times.” Jonas nods towards the door to the garage. “Unless you want the couch, I’ll give you a ride home.”

Truthfully the couch sounds pretty good, but Charles doesn’t want to impose. He folds the dishtowel and leaves it on the counter as Jonas disappears to fetch keys. In the garage, the chill air perks him up a bit, and he trails a hand over the plastic bins stacked up on handmade plywood shelves. The labels are written mostly in Molly’s looping hand.

“You don’t look like you want to leave,” Jonas says, startling him.

“Guess I don’t. Hector’s out, place seems lonely to go back to.”

Jonas slides the keys into his pocket and after a moment’s quiet consideration, he shuts the door to the house. “You going to be able to let this go?” he asks, his steps a whisper on the concrete. When he’s near enough, he puts a finger to Charles’s jaw, makes him tip his face up so his gaze will follow.

“Do I have a choice?”

The faint turn of Jonas’s mouth isn’t comforting, but it’s honest. “Son, you’ve always got a choice.”

And Charles knows it’s true. Knows too that Jonas is weighing what’s good and what’s right and what’s necessary when that light touch at his jaw turns into the warm slide of Jonas’s palm.

“Molly--” Charles starts to say, because this isn’t some hotel room on the other side of the world.

“My wife is my concern,” Jonas says. What’s left in the cool, silent air isn’t much different: the team is his concern too.

“Top, I didn’t mean for tonight to be like this.”

“You’re the best of all of us, Carlito,” Jonas says, both his hands now warm on Charles’s face. And even if his gaze has dropped, Charles can _hear_ the smile in Jonas’s voice. “And I know you didn’t start out that way. When you get hurt, the hurt runs deep.”

Jonas doesn’t pull him in and kiss him, not like the last time he was raw and unraveling and little more than the shape of a man full of broken-glass pieces. He doesn’t know what to expect when Jonas’s big hands slide away from his face, brace briefly on his neck before traveling to his shoulders. There’s no bed to stumble towards here, and no adrenaline making him claw at the buttons of Jonas’s shirt. When Jonas pushes this time, it’s not to get him to say what’s on his mind, but to guide him slowly backwards, until Charles is lined up against those neatly stacked bins with his chest squeezing tight. He isn't sure he should want this and that just makes the ache in his chest deepen.

“Now, I want you open your pants and take your cock out,” Jonas says, and as Charles fumbles with his zip, Jonas goes down into a crouch. Charles still can’t quite meet his gaze. “Good. You keep your hands at your sides and you do your level best to not make a sound. Understood?”

Charles opens his mouth, but when an affirmative gets caught in his throat anyway, he shuts his trap and nods.

“That’s it,” Jonas says, and his grip is tight and firm even though Charles is still mostly soft. “I’m going to take care of you and make you feel a little bit better the only way I can. Then we’ll go back inside and get you some blankets. That ride home can wait until after breakfast.”

If it’s the relief of knowing he isn’t going to have to go home alone, or that Jonas--like the rest of the team--loves him even if that’s the not the word any of them use, or if it’s simply the heat of Jonas’s mouth taking him in whole, Charles’s legs go weak. He lets the shelves take his weight, and watches as Jonas sucks him hard.

There’s nothing particularly sexy about the way Jonas sucks him off. There’s no style or flash, no slow open-mouthed licks like the last few girls Charles had the privilege of knowing, and there’s no undercurrent of lust that says he particularly likes having a dick in his mouth. He can’t help the way his eye catches on the gold on Jonas’s finger, but if Jonas doesn’t have any qualms about this, he can learn to let it go, too.

Pleasure is such a basic level of connection, and through it, Jonas reaches into the very core of him. Charles feels grounded for the first time since he’d lost his notebook, and he’ll still probably be angry for a while about the song but he’s got a lot more words in him than had been on those pages.

He thinks about love as Jonas’s hand flattens out low on his belly, and he thinks about loving as he closes his eyes. He thinks about what it means to follow orders as the harshness of his breath wars with it the slick, rhythmic sound of Jonas’s mouth working the length of him.

He’s always got a choice, he recognizes, and lets free a shaky moan as he comes.


End file.
